bursting forth in puffs; I covered my mouth with my hand and rushed wildly out. …
Steps. Wind. Damp, leaping fragments of lights and faces. … And while running: “No! Only to see her! To see her once more!”
Here again, an empty white page. All I remember is feet; not people, just feet; hundreds of feet, confusedly stamping feet, falling from somewhere on the pavement; a heavy rain of feet. … And some cheerful, daring voice, and a shout that was probably for me: “Hey, hey! Come here! Come along with us!”
Afterward—a deserted square heavily overloaded with tense wind. In the middle of the square a dim, heavy threatening mass—the Machine of the Well-Doer; and a seemingly unexpected image arose within me in response to the sight of the Machine: a snow-white pillow and on the pillow a head thrown back, and half-closed eyes and a sharp, sweet line of teeth. … All this seemed so absurdly, so terribly connected with the Machine. I know how this connection has come about but I do not yet want to see it nor to say it aloud—I don’t want to! I do not!
I closed my eyes, sat down on the steps which lead upwards to the Machine. I must have been running for my face was wet. From somewhere very far away cries were coming. But nobody heard them; nobody heard me crying: “Save me from it—save me!”
If only I had a mother as the ancients had—my mother, mine , for whom I should be not the Builder of the Integral and not D-530 , not a molecule of the United State but merely a living human piece, a piece of herself, a trampled, smothered, a cast-off piece. … And though I were driving the nails into the cross or being nailed to it (perhaps it is the same), she would hear what no one else could hear; her old grown-together wrinkled lips. …